Choosing a name for this series of images was not an easy job. Landscapes of memory? Border tales? A few years ago, with reference to a project linked to the city, Agostini had worked on the concept of "cathedrals" – large abandoned buildings or installations. The noun "cathedrals" lingered on in his mind in the progress of the seven or eight years when he would possibly go for walks in the mountains of the Trento region, in search for places that retained traces of World War I. "Signs of the war, of the history of our area", he says. The word 'our' speaks volumes on the indivisible bond that ties him to the area where he was born, he himself having moved away from it several years ago.

In actual fact, several works of his encompass his past experience, his life-story, his bonds: the factories, which even his father had helped in building; the landscape of Valsugana, where he was born; Milan, which is where he lives, as well as the concept of fickleness along the border which – in Valsugana – separated the Italians and the families from one another, starting with the homestead that his grandparents had on Austrian land and which was opposite the one their Italian relatives had.
In step with his previous research work, this is how the long project – "'Cathedrals' of memory" – came to light: collective memory and a mind for places, bolstered by the reading of compulsory authors, of Rigoni Stern, of Lussu. However, there are also personal reminiscences of children's games, when the forts or the caves at the back of the houses were hideaways. The same forts and caves that had housed the soldiers, around Grigno or at Borgo. Memories of the places that he used to visit together with his father when they would walk as far as Mount Ortigara. At the time he somehow seemed to have the need to retrace his steps as a grown-up, taking along his camera and making use of photographs in order to go over his father's stories and to regain possession of the images of the mountains.

Agostini is familiar with what he is photographing and is well-acquainted with photography. From a cultural point of view his schooling allowed him to wisely make use of a documentary style. With the concise thoroughness of accurate documentation – which does not express judgement, he dealt with architecture, industry, still lifes. In Valsugana, the accuracy of the variants learnt and metabolized, as well as the objectivity of reassessing things as they really are, blend into a vision bordering dreams – precisely, borders. He pursues realistic and visionary, discreet and sensitive language which allows him to be a witness and an expounder, which is faithful to history, transforming it into an almost personal cogitative encounter. Time is obliterating the most palpable traces but inquiring looks identify and memory knows.
Each landscape retains a trace which refers to evidence and Agostini, in the great extent of the view, preserves a fragment – be it the least visible – which is only slightly hinted at but, determinedly, he also enters the wartime fortifications which are gradually crumbling amidst the nature surrounding the Lagorai and Pasubio ranges, in Forte Belvedere, at Cima d'Asta. He comes across findings, fragments of rocks, residues of bombs, the same which, as a child, Agostini used to come across along the footpaths and which, as a grown-up, he takes back home to his studio to photograph. A conceptual process? Definitely an autobiographical one.
As Agostini is figuratively cut off from the context so dear to him, so is each finding thus photographed in a deliberately detached way against a white background. However, these still lifes of objects removed from their environment turn into a note which repeats itself in the score, which punctuates the rhythm of the melodic flow of the images. The strain of his tale is but a whisper, the colours are not forceful but are ready to prompt, nature – tortured or uncontaminated – becomes a protagonist of remembrances and a witness to them. His journey over the mountains and through history becomes the journey of each and every one of us. In contemplating the imposing and pitiless landscape of the journey, it is easy to recall or to imagine the fatigue, the sorrow, the fear and the despair of the past. The excruciating idiocy of all wars.